Spirit of the Mind
by NativeStar
Summary: Sam saved Dean from Hell but not from dying. But is Dean really gone?


**Title:** Spirit of the Mind  
**Author:** Nativestar  
**Pairing/Character:** Dean and Sam. No pairings.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Just playing.  
**Rating:** PG-13, gen  
**Word Count:** 2007 words  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Slight character death. As in Dean's dead, but still around, and I haven't decided whether he'll stay dead or not. Give it a chance, it's still very much about both the brothers.  
**Author Notes:** Huge thank you to my beta, yasminke who is made of awesome.  
**Summary:** Sam saved Dean from Hell but not from dying. But is Dean really gone?

* * *

Sam was pretty sure that he'd saved Dean's soul, but the doctors told him they were certain he hadn't saved Dean.

_There's nothing we can do. It's only a matter of time. I'm sorry. _

Everyone seemed to be apologising to Sam these days.

_I'm sorry, Sam. But, I don't regret it._

_I'm sorry. I've searched everywhere. There's nothing to bring him back, Sam._

_I'm sorry. Jo just called me. Honey if there's anything I can do..._

The hell hounds had done their damage: this was the one fight Dean wasn't coming back from.

Sam looked down at Dean in the bed, his chest moving mechanically in time to a hiss-click and memories from the car crash a few years earlier come bubbling to the surface. Same wires, tubes and equipment, same steady beep of the heart monitor. This time they only offered hollow reassurance. Dean was alive, but only technically.

"I'm sorry, Dean."

Sam scrubbed a hand across his face, clearing the way for new tear tracks. He rolled Dean's ring around in his hand. A nurse, she'd told him her name but he wasn't interested at the time, had given him a bag with Dean's personal effects.

Dean would want him to wear the amulet now, but he wasn't sure he could.

At least Dean looked peaceful, more so than last time. It built on Sam's hope that Dean's soul was in a better place, maybe with Mom and Dad. _Hopefully_ with Mom and Dad: he didn't want Dean to be alone. Dean would hate that.

Sam fought the impulse to drive to the nearest crossroads. He knew Dean would kill him if he did that and to be honest no demon in their right mind would make a deal with Sam after what he'd just done.

"I'm scared Dean, my whole life you've always been there." Sam's voice cracked. "Now I got no one."

He'd asked the staff for privacy, and had been shown which switch to push. He was going to do this, not some doctor in a sterile white coat. Dean was his brother and this would be Sam's final act for him.

"Bye, Dean." Sam hit the switch, and the hiss-click stopped. Dean was still.

A minute passed.

Finally, Dean was at peace.

* * *

**_Two months later_**

Sam's exhausted. He'd found the demon he'd been tracking, but the exorcism had been long and gruelling with no survivors. As he sits on the bed in his empty motel room his back twinges, and while he'd love a hot shower to work out his aches and bruises, he doesn't think he can find the energy.

The job had been hard enough when there'd been two of them, now it's just about impossible. The research has him up pulling all-nighters (not that Dean had done a lot of that but he had taken on enough of the load, made it manageable), and Sam doesn't think he'll ever get used to not having someone at his back on a hunt.

Sam buries his head in his hands, his hair's longer now and it falls like curtains around them as he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. His shoulders shudder, he misses Dean _so much_ right now. He knows it's because he's tired, and he should get some rest. If he wasn't so tired, his defenses wouldn't be so low. He could deal, or at least pretend, but the emotions surge up and he feels Dean's absence like a yawning chasm.

Sam feels so _alone_. Even though he's had many people call to check up on him, offer condolences and ask if there's anything they can do for him. The number of times he's had to bite off a scathing "Can you bring back the dead?"…They mean well: they just don't understand.

Word spread even quicker than Sam thought in the hunting community. He'd been fending off calls on both his and Dean's phone. And there were so many. Their reputation wasn't all bad, and there were quite a few who had held Dean in a high regard, respecting both him and his hunting skills.

Sam had also learnt quite a bit of what Dean and their father had gotten up to during the four years he was at Stanford. He'd had a good long conversation with someone called Steve, who'd helped out with a werewolf hunt. He was only five years older than Dean and they'd celebrated after the hunt with a night out in town, and _boy_ did he have some stories. Apparently the waitress Dean had spent several hours flirting with was not only batting for the other team but also on the waiting list for a gender reassignment operation.

Sam had still been laughing when Steve had said goodbye, telling Sam to call if he needed anything. The phone had bleeped indicating the end of the call and Sam had turned, smiling and sucking in a breath to—

But there was no one there. Sam's opportunity to tease his brother had long since passed. It was more than that, Steve had filled in a gap, but Sam didn't know where Dean had gone afterwards. What had been the next hunt? _Where_ had the next hunt been? Whom had Dean met? Sam regretted not asking more when Dean was still alive.

It had always been a shaky topic though, "what did you do while I wasn't there?" A reminder of those years of not speaking, of not being brothers, not in the truest sense of the word. Sam regretted so much, but mostly he regretted cutting Dean out of those four years of his life and not being involved in Dean's in return.

He'd lost part of himself when he lost Dean. Sam didn't remember his first word, where they'd lived after the fire, his first day at school. Dean was four years older; he'd always known the answers to any question Sam had asked him about their childhood. Now, if Sam couldn't remember something, it was just _gone_. Nothing and no one could fill in Sam's gaps.

He's so tired, holding his head in his hands and determinedly fighting back the tears. He will not lose it again. _No_. He's stronger than that ... or at least he wishes he is, as a lone tear sneaks out between his fingers and plops onto the stained motel carpet. He wants to hear Dean's voice one more time. Just once more, to tell him everything will be okay, that he's strong and he can do this. Just like Dean had done so many times before. It had never felt like false platitudes when Dean'd said it, if Dean had said it would be okay then Sam couldn't help but believe him. It was like an ingrained little brother response that he'd no control over, things had always seemed to be better if Dean had said it would be okay.

So that's why when he hears it, he thinks it's just his subconscious answering his desperate pleas.

"It's okay, Sammy. Everything's gonna be all right, I promise."

Sam lets out a shuddering sigh. "Great, now I'm losing it," he mutters.

"You're not crazy, Sam. Weird, yes. Geeky, yes. But not crazy."

"I'm having a conversation with myself, how is that not—" Sam lifts his head.

Dean.

On the bed.

_Dean_ is sitting on the motel bed. Looking just like ... Dean. Whole and healthy and definitely not like a spirit. He's corporeal, or at least opaque, Sam figures Dean would object if he threw something at him to check, no matter whether he was a figment of his imagination or actually there.

_Actually there._ No. _Don't even start thinking like that._ There's no way. No way in hell. Sam says as much to the...whatever it is that looks like Dean.

"Sure of that are ya, Sammy?"

"Yeah. I am." Sam stands and starts to pace. "Damn it Dean! You cannot be _real_. You're either a spirit or a hallucination."

"What if I'm neither?"

"What?"

This is too much. Sam wants his brother back, but not like this. He can't handle this. That isn't Dean, it can't possibly be, even with the lives they led, this is far too much into the boundaries of impossible for Sam to believe. Which means either Dean's a spirit or Sam's mind has snapped. Both can be fixed, which means Dean will be leaving ... again.

"You can't be here."

Sam repeats, wincing at how much he sounds like a broken record.

"So you keep saying …" Dean slouches back on the bed, stretching his legs out and crossing his arms over his chest. The chest that's breathing and solid and alive. "Yet here I am," Sam's resisting the urge to reach out and touch his hallucination because that has to be what this is, and you probably shouldn't talk to your hallucination but—

"I'm serious, Dean! I salted and burned your, your body. You can not be here."

"So maybe I'm not?"

"What?" Sam turns, reaching into the duffle behind him and quickly turns back, now leveling a rock salt filled shotgun at Dean.

"Put that down, Sam. You're only going to end up wrecking the wall."

"So what are you? Hallucination? Demon? Shapeshifter?"

"None of the above."

"Helpful. You'd say the same thing if you _were_ one of the above."

"Hey, you're the one asking the dumb questions."

Sam considers swapping guns and shooting Dean—it—whatever, with a silver bullet.

"I'm you, Sam."

That's not an answer Sam's expecting.

"I'm the part of Dean that lives on in you. His memory, if you will. A handsome, sharp-witted and an awesome brother of memory if I do say so myself." Dean grins, proudly.

"So I _am_ hallucinating."

_Terrific._ Sam lowers the gun, and the hope he didn't realize he'd been holding deflates inside him. It feels like losing Dean again, and Sam's not sure he can deal with that right now.

"Not necessarily." Dean replies—

_What?_ Sam's beyond confused now. "Sometimes a person holds onto someone so hard, so unrelentingly, that a piece of that someone stays behind. Like a … fragment of a spirit."

A smile tugs at the corner of Sam's mouth. It feels strange, like the muscles have forgotten how to move together to form a smile. He's not entirely convinced; this Dean could be lying, but he's acting like his brother and he hasn't tried to hurt him so…_maybe. _This time Sam can feel the hope rising inside him. He feels like a man drowning in rough seas who's just been offered a lifeboat.

"It's really you?"

"Yeah." Dean smiles. "Either way, it's really me."

Sam drops the shotgun and sits down, burying his head in his hands again, but this time in relief. "God, Dean."

"I know, Sammy. Take some time, do your geek thing and check some stuff out. I'll be here when you need me."

It sounds like a goodbye, or rather a "see you later", and when Sam lifts his head he's not surprised that the room is empty once more.

But this time he doesn't feel alone.

Sitting at the table the next morning, nursing his coffee, Sam drags the laptop towards him. He boots it up, fully intending to look some stuff up online: after all, he's seeing and talking to his dead brother, and there's no way— even in their jacked up view of the world— that that's healthy.

His hands freeze over the keyboard. It had felt so good last night, to talk to Dean again. It had been a flawless impersonation of how Sam remembered Dean and instead of reminding him how much he missed Dean, it had felt like old times.

Dean had said he would be there when Sam needed him, and right now, Sam doesn't think he'll make it without Dean. He shuts the laptop. If he's screwed up in the head for seeing and talking to Dean, well, he'll just have to live with it.

* * *

Reviews are very much welcomed, along with concrit. Please let me know if you'd be interested in reading more in this 'verse as I have more written (Dean has a lot of fun as a 'spirit', plus Bobby makes an appearance) and whether I post more depends on if people want to read more. I'm a little nervous as to the response as I kinda killed Dean. 'smiles sheepishly'


End file.
